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Gun rights advocates in Illinois have a lot to complain about, but now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Requests for Firearm Owner Identification Cards have piled up recently, leaving a mountain of paperwork that’s going nowhere fast. Illinois citizens must possess a FOID card in order to legally purchase a firearm.

Illinois state police have lost their patience with Rely, the outsourcing company that process Illinois FOID applications. State police have since fired Rely for its slow pace handling the 70,000 backlogged applications.

Rely has been reeling from the news. After losing the six-figure contract, Rely officials laid off 20 employees at their newly downsized Illinois office. The CEO of Rely Services blamed the state, arguing that state officials were unable to properly predict that Illinois gun owners would send in so many applications. He added that losing so many jobs was devastating for the company and its employees. But at the end of the day Rely simply wasn’t doing the job that they were hired to do.

State police have since struck up a new deal with a firm called Boland Enterprises. Under the 90-day emergency contract, Boland Enterprises employees have the daunting task of scanning 70,000 applications into computer systems so that the Illinois State Police can meet its statutory mandate.

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Gun rights advocates are left saying, “I told you so.” Gun control advocates and gun rights supporters rarely agree about gun laws, but everybody can agree that all of this red tape is obnoxious. The applications drain state resources and add extra red tape. Illinois tax payers suffer the most as law-abiding citizens must wait week after week for their applications to be approved in order to make a legal purchase. This lends credibility to the classic gun rights argument that gun control laws only hurt law-abiding citizens.

Do you see this as more proof that gun control doesn't work or is all of the red tape a necessary evil?